Music Review: The Wild Feathers rock out with music for the road

This cover image released by Warner Bros. shows "Greetings From the Neon Frontier," by The Wild Feathers. (Warner Bros. via AP)

(AP) -- The Wild Feathers, "Greetings from the Neon Frontier" (Warner Music Nashville)

The Nashville-based Wild Feathers say they are falling back on their country roots on their latest album, and with tight harmonies and "take these city blues away" lyrics, there's some truth to that. But they also have turned the volume back up, reverting to the muscular sound that made their self-titled debut album so promising.

This is road music. It might make you step on the gas a little harder.

Much of "Greetings from the Neon Frontier" lands somewhere on the Tom Petty-Eagles spectrum, evoking rock 'n' roll influences that have always been obvious with this talented band. A track called "Wildfire," for example, has a "Peaceful Easy Feeling" ring to it, and "Hold Onto Love" features the kind of adventurous melody and power chord jangle that set Petty apart.

But this is a better album than the band's sophomore set, "Lonely Is a Lifetime," which didn't quite capture the spirit of a group that burst on the scene five years ago with a fresh take on a sound others had pioneered.

Happily, the band has put the focus back where it belongs: on harmony and the kind of acoustic-electric rock that gets your adrenalin going. Songs like "Golden Days" and "Big Sky" celebrate simple things like wide open spaces and the way things used to be.

No, they're not the first band to take on those ideas. But they can still make the hours on the highway fly by.